


Puzzle

by TheIcyQueen



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Pre-Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-05 01:19:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17315366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIcyQueen/pseuds/TheIcyQueen
Summary: No one ever understood that weapon of his. After all, how much damage could a book really do? What they would never know was just how deeply it could cut, if in the right hands.





	Puzzle

His mind was always moving.  
  
_Always_.  
  
He had always found  _some_  way to occupy the insatiable wantneed _want_  of his intellect. Fingers tangled in a puzzle, nose-deep into a dusty and forgotten tome, drawing up schematics for missions that would never come to be. Even when in the deepest throes of sleep, his eyes flicked restlessly behind his eyelids, turning daytime worries and contemplations into rich tapestries of nightmare. It was the curse of the child prodigy, and would be, until he ceased to exist.  
  
If one could call this an existence.   
  
The book was his most constant companion, there even when he lost his patience with the Academic--a scenario that was becoming all too common, nowadays--or the Hero was sent out on some mission deemed too dangerous for his own pathetic, childish ineptitudes. But it remained a mystery to him. A  _vexing_  mystery.  
  
It was his weapon, his instrument. The others had their blades and their blunt playthings, and he had his lexicon. So then, it only made  _sense_  that he hadn't come into possession of it until after the messy business of losing his heart. But that didn't explain the contents of its pages.  
  
At any moment, he could open to a page he'd never seen before, stories and warnings and recipes and epitaphs and  _memories_  in words, languages, symbols he had no business recognizing. It was forever changing, his book. Page One, today, could be a retelling of some foreign fairy tale, embroidered with pretty lettering and flowery language, but would be blank, tomorrow. Or perhaps it would be the delicately-penned flourishes of an 18th century sonata. There was no sort of consistency to the thing, no Table of Contents, no rules. But that wasn't what puzzled him. In this world, it was only too normal for simple rules of physics, of common sense, to be blatantly spit upon. No, what worried him were the pictures.  
  
They would come and go as they pleased, just like everything else contained in the yellowed pages. Phantom images that would make his stomach drop, upon turning the page--the sort of delayed disappointment that accompanies seeing something that you wish to desperately take back having to witness.  _Regret_ , he would think to himself. If he was still capable of any such thing. They would bring a strange, dulled ache to his chest, somewhere where there  _used_  to be emotion. And even then, he had to question if he had  _ever_  been as compassionately-endowed as those around him.  
  
The pictures--the damned pictures. They were too bright, too glossy, too  _new_  for the crisp leafs of the book. And they were impossible. He couldn't recall a single one of them being taken.  
  
And then, there was the fact that they were photographs of a past life. Back when he still stood knee-high, back before the blue of his eyes had dulled to a steely silver, back before he was the Schemer, the tactician, the strategist, the plotter, the dangerous little weasel who lived among the shadows in the basement. Back when he was Ienzo.  
  
No, he didn't like the pictures. He didn't like them  _at all_.  
  
They were unsettling. They were  _wrong_. Their appearance brought a newfound paranoia, always having to look over his shoulder, scrunch down lower into the sofa, duck his head to try and cover what he was seeing, as though someone had planted them for him to find. But that was ridiculous. The only one with  _any_  power over the lexicon was  _him_.  
  
There was an angry fluttering somewhere in his throat, an adrenaline rush produced in case he had to run, in case he had to slam the heavy leather cover to shield himself from what he was seeing. But his fingers betrayed him and flipped page after page after page, traitorous eyes roving over the clean, clear images and the loose scribbles of childish handwriting that he recognized as once his.  
  
The first was easy enough to handle. It wasn't as though there was much difference between then and now, really, Even had simply gotten older. The foreboding glow of unforgiving and unstable chemical reactions was just as familiar now, in Vexen's lab, as it had been then. He had the sudden inkling that the book was luring him into a false sense of security, giving him the easier images first, allowing him to rationalize it all away, bringing him further into the web until he couldn't look away from what he was seeing.   
  
A flip of the page, and his theory was given its first reinforcement. He knew the portrait well, had walked past it hundredsthousands _millions_  of times, back in his old life. But it gave him pause, all the same. Ansem had taken the brunt of the blame for the darkness, for the Heartless, for the swirling pit of destruction that Radiant Garden had been reduced to. That couldn't have been farther from the truth--he could only remember so well, the vehement confrontations in the labs, the demands to stop, stop before they went too far, stop before they couldn't take it back--but it had been his fate, all the same. It was much easier to blame the figurehead of the research, than it was to point fingers at the two fresh-faced scientists that had  _truly_  let it all go to Hell.  
  
And Ansem had taken him in. Sad, parentless little Ienzo, with a vocabulary larger than he was, with those distrustful eyes and a lack of innocence that was horrifying to see in a six year old child. He'd never said a word about repayment or debt, just taken the child in when no one else would. He'd even done his best to reverse the already-hardening of the boy's widespread hatred of the world. And he probably _could've_  undone it all, entirely…had Xehanort not gotten to the child, first. There was only so much that sea-salt ice cream could do, when held up against promises of scientific discovery and infamy. It wasn't difficult to recall those last few days, before the end. The pleas, the appeals to his reason and to his moral compass, the _disappointment_. He could remember  _that_  with a startling clarity. Ansem had been the only person to genuinely be  _disappointed_  in him. Ever.   
  
He'd also been the only one who'd ever taken the boy in, as his own.  
  
He resisted the urge to tear the page from out of the book and set it aflame. That had been close.  _Too_  close. For a moment, for a second, for an instant…he'd come disturbingly close to…to what?  _Feeling_? He didn't like the thought. Not one bit.  
  
Before he'd registered his own movements, he'd flipped the page, trying to put as much distance between himself and that all-knowing stare as possible. Not that it did a terrible amount of good. Immediately, he was presented with Ventus, the boy grinning from ear to ear as though it was going out of fashion. Another pang of… _something_  tore its way through his core, leaving him breathless and empty, for a terrifying stretch of seconds. Perhaps it was just because he'd seen that face so often, on Roxas, minus the smile, minus the shine in the eyes, and the thought hit too close to home. They'd both been kids, after all, Ventus had been older, but he had still been a  _kid_. The darkness didn't seem to much care who it dined upon. But then again, perhaps the lump in his throat was because of that day, of that memory. The one where he'd almost perished, where he'd set off as though he was an adult, trying to get away from Even's lecturing, or Braig's taunts, or some combination of the two, and ended up in the middle of a swarm of Unversed.   
  
And then there had been Ven, in all of his idealistic cheer, effectively keeping him from ending up as nothing more than a smear on the town's cobblestones. Even had swooped him up soon after, and the afternoon had been full of scoldings that were too benign for a child of Ienzo's intellect. But the thought of Ven had stayed with him. The idea that some stranger, someone he'd never seen before--and would never see  _after_ \--could so readily rescue him, without expecting so much as a "Thank you" in return. It had made him wonder, even back then, if he'd been wrong about people, wrong about the world. If a complete stranger could save your life with a smile and a shrug, maybe there was  _some_  good, out there.  
  
The thought made him scoff and roll his eyes, turning the page again. Ven had ended up just as the rest of them had. A shell.  
  
But the next page was the last straw. Had he been weak enough to admit it so, he might've even considered it his breaking point. The thought that it wasn't fair, wasn't fair, wasn't  _fair_  resounded in some far recess of his skull. Why was the book  _doing_ this to him?  
  
While he knew for a fact that he could still be hoisted up by the Hero without a second thought, he doubted highly that he could still perch so easily on his shoulder. He could barely remember ever being so small, being so  _cute_ , and yet there he was. Looking away from the picture did very little to help, nor did the dodging gesture of furrowing his brow.   
  
After a long moment, he chanced a glance back down at the page, gnawing anxiously at the inside of his mouth. Was this really what they had been? Had this really been their reality?   
  
Slowly, cautiously, he traced his image with a finger, almost as though afraid he would burst into flame. When was the last time he'd smiled? Some taunting voice asserted that he was  _looking_  at the last smile he'd worn so freely. His lips twitched sympathetically. With another glance over his shoulder, he leaned further back in the settee, tightening his lips experimentally. He couldn't even remember what it had  _felt_ like, anymore…  
  
He attempted to turn the corners of his lips up, but managed an incredulous grimace, at best. If nothing else, he was an  _illusionist_ , he should've been able to manage something as simple as a pretend smile. A smirk, cold and calculating, was as close as he got, before the muscles of his face began to quiver, and he gave up, entirely.   
  
Without another thought, he shut the lexicon, closing his eyes and taking a breath. When he finally gathered himself enough to open his eyes, his fingers had taken to drumming against the cover, echoing sadly throughout the empty room. He looked back down at it, shoulders heaving in a half-sigh as he made up his mind.  
  
Carefully-- _very_  carefully--he reopened the tome, flipping to the page, once more. Reluctantly, he looked back down, expecting the same taunting image. But it had gone blank.  _All_  of the photographs were gone, pages clean and untouched.  
  
It was something he didn't want to devote too much thought to. Better to pretend he'd never seen it at all.  
  
But his mind never stopped moving. And sometimes, that was all he had.

**Author's Note:**

> Reupload from 8/18/13.


End file.
